Bungie Weekly Update: 03/18/2011

Time and time again, we are absolutely blown away by the positive energy that emanates from this kick ass community. Hours after we launched our inaugural Bungie Foundation charity drive, selling discrete, but ultra-stylish wristbands for Japan Quake Relief efforts, Amazon notified us that you had run the store absolutely bone dry. You can’t see it, but I am giving you the most enthusiastic air five ever right now.

You’re the best!

Of course, we replenished our stocks without a second thought and sales continue to soar, with the wristband currently occupying the number one spot in Amazon.com’s clothing category. Suck it down, 501’s. You might be an American classic, but charity comes before comfortable fitting jeans.

If this is the first you’ve heard of our charity effort, don’t worry, you’re not too late to participate. Check out the existing Bungie.net article to get up to speed, or just hop on over to the Bungie Store to snag a wristband for each of your many appendages and at least one for all of your friends and acquaintances. All proceeds are going to the Red Cross, earmarked for quake relief in Japan.

But even though we’re really proud of the early numbers, we hope you’re just getting warmed up. In addition to snagging a wristband for yourself, if you’re able, please help spread the word through your community mainstays using this handy dandy link:

If you’re not in the States, we apologize for the confusion and the delay. We’re working with Amazon.com to come up with a quick and dirty international solution for our store front. In the meantime, you can still help the cause by donating through the Red Cross or any other organization of your choosing. Every little bit helps.

Assuming we can correct the technical hurdle, we’ll let you know when the wristbands are being shipped out to our international friends. Until that happens, I promise to relentlessly -blam!- and moan to the powers that be until they are willing to bend time and space just to shut me up.

Defy the Covenant

Though it seems crass to don the salesman’s cap right after talking up our collective charitable endeavors, we’d be remiss to not note that 343 Industries launched the Defiant Map Pack this past Tuesday. Besides, they’re not even our maps. We’re shilling on another studio’s behalf!

If you’re looking to add some sweet maps to your Halo: Reach portfolio, Defiant adds two new multiplayer maps and a Firefight mission to the fray. Early buzz is that they are totally awesome. You should definitely check them out.

They’re available right now for 800 Space Allards. Click here to queue them for download.

Optimizations

Speaking of Defiant, Jeremiah and our support crew recently corrected a matchmaking setting that was making it more difficult than it should have been to play Unearthed in Firefight. If you were so mad at Bungie because you couldn’t get a match in on your hot new Firefight mission outside of Custom Games, you should be good to go now. Forgive us?

We’re also fielding feedback for the two multiplayer maps in Optimatch, but though we are using your polite suggestions to arm 343 Industries with subjective data and our own personal recommendations, we are not making the final design calls for iterative changes to Condemned and Highlands. We’ll certainly collect your feedback and present it writ large, but any changes to these particular spaces will need to come directly from the source.

If there are any revisions planned in the future, we’ll make sure to keep you in the loop. Because we love and respect you and want you to know stuff.

Matchmaking Updatin’!

Outside of Defiant, Jeremiah has big plans for April’s Matchmaking Update. And don’t worry, these aren’t part of some terribly conceived joke aimed squarely at the face of the foolish. Jeremiah always keeps it real. Here’s what he has to say for himself, and for the upcoming matchmaking alterations.

The April Matchmaking Update is tentatively scheduled to go live on March 29th. As usual, any of this is subject to change as we are not yet finished with testing. Jon says hi and that Urk loves Dr. Becker!

ACTION SACK
This is a new 4v4 playlist inspired by community map and game variants. The initial lineup isn’t as insane as some players may expect, we’re using this playlist to introduce new gametypes that we’ve scripted up. We’ll be looking at feedback and suggestions for future additions to this playlist, so drop by the Optimatch forum and tell us about your favorite wacky 4v4 gametypes!

Power Slayer
This Slayer gametype is designed to allow players to gain special traits based on the types of kills they perform. Currently there are traits for Basic Kill, Melee Kill, Assassination Kill and Headshot Kill. Each time you perform one of these kills you will gain the traits assigned to that kill for 10 seconds. Killing another player during this period will refresh your timer back to 10 seconds and extend your powers. You can also chain them together to gain multiple types of powers, so if you Melee Kill a player and then Headshot Kill a player before your timer runs out, you’ll gain the traits of both kill types. We haven’t finalized the default traits for each kill type yet, but these will also be configurable in custom games so you can create your own!

Speedpile
The idea of this gametype was based on Stockpile and allows players to carry multiple flags on their back while still using weapons, vehicles and equipment. When a player touches a flag it will automatically attach to their back and will only drop when they are killed. Flags can be assigned different point values which are displayed above the flag in your HUD. Flags which are worth more than 1 point will be larger and on fire as well. Delivering the flags to your Speedpile goal zone will instantly score them and cause the flags to respawn at their original location. This is not a Stockpile variant, so if you want to setup your own maps to work with the gametype you’ll need to Forge it using the Speedpile game variant to have access to the appropriate labels.

Speedflag
This one is pretty simple, it’s a CTF variant which allows you to carry the flag on your back at all times. Just like in Speedpile, you can still use weapons, vehicles and equipment without dropping the flag. It’s worth mentioning that the only way to drop the flag is to either score or be killed, so make sure you want to carry the flag as long as possible before picking it up, you can’t pass it off to a teammate without sacrificing yourself. This game variant will work with any map which is already setup for CTF.

HammerBall / Hockey
In this gametype, Golf Balls spawn on specific points and players use Gravity Hammers to hit them towards a board which has multiple goals that each have different point values. The map we setup was one we found in the Community and we mirrored it so each team of 4 is back to back with a barrier preventing them from interfering with each other, unless of course you’re playing HammerBall Xtreme. The goals are created by team specific hill markers labeled as goals with spawn sequencer set to the point value of the goal. If the Golf Ball reaches the goal, it will be scored and your team will score points equal to the score specified in the object properties. This brings me to our next gametype… Hockey! Hockey uses a game variant of HammerBall and is played on a hockey rink map that we found in the Community as well.

TEAM CLASSIC
This is a new 4v4 playlist featuring game variants with no equipment and custom settings, as well as remakes of Classic Halo maps we found in the Community.

Player Traits which differ from default Slayer:

Shield Recharge Rate 110%

Health Recharge Rate 110%

Damage Modifier 110%

Melee Modifier 75%

Player Speed 120%

Jump Height 125%

Player Gravity 150%

Maps we plan to use:

Battle Canyon

Dreadnought

High Noon

Hydro

Magus

Prolonged

Prophet

Rat Trap

Rockout

Editor’s Note: You can find all of these maps in the community file collection, but a few have been renamed. Jeremiah was too lazy to link them and he bailed early today. Jerk! I’ll try to round them up for next week so you can take them for a spin prior to the official introduction in matchmaking - Urk

COMMUNITY BTB
Our first round of Community BTB will run in April, featuring BTB maps from the Forgetacular submissions. Future rounds of Community BTB will be lovingly crafted by our Community Cartographers group.

Maps we plan to use:

Bendarius Ridge

Montana Gambit

Outcrop

Renegade

Ridged

Rift

MLG
The MLG playlist will be updated with the MLG V3 maps and gametypes, the lineup can be found below. Visit www.majorleaguegaming.com for more info!

Due to the inclusion of more 100% Forged map variants which do not adequately support splitscreen, the MLG playlist now has a Max Local Players count of 1.

MLG Team Slayer v3

MLG Countdown v3

MLG Element v3.1

MLG Nexus v3

MLG Sanctuary v3.1

MLG Zealot v3

MLG Retroactive v3

MLG Android v3

MLG CTF 5 v3

MLG Countdown v3

MLG Element v3.1

MLG Zealot v3

MLG Nexus v3

MLG Android v3

MLG CTF 3 v3

MLG Sanctuary v3.1

MLG Bomb Zeal v3

MLG Zealot v3

MLG Bomb Count v3

MLG Countdown v3

MLG Bomb Sanc v3

MLG Sanctuary v3.1

MLG King v3

MLG Zealot v3

MLG Countdown v3

MLG Element v3.1

MLG Territories v3

MLG Sanctuary v3.1

DOUBLE TEAM
We’re adding sequential King of the Hill to our 2v2 lineup.

The following maps have been modified to support sequential hill in Double Team:

Unanchored

Countdown

Asylum

Arena Zealot

Random List of Additional Changes

KOTH now has game variant support for Multiple Teammate Scoring allowing multiple teammates to gain score for their team while in the hill.

All KOTH matchmaking variants now have a hill movement time of 1 minute.

All KOTH matchmaking gametypes now allow equipment use while in the hill (2v2/4v4 gametypes limit equipment to Sprint, Jetpack and Hologram – Armor Lock removed from all KOTH loadouts).

All KOTH matchmaking gametypes now have 1 frag starting grenades.

Added a HUD widget for CTF gametypes which show when your flag is away from home or held by an enemy.

More softkills on Pinnacle, Uncaged, Hemorrhage, Countdown and Asylum.

Modified all default matchmaking map variants to support a static initial hill while playing Crazy Random King.

Slayer game variants in 6v6 playlists are now 75 to win.

3 Ball is now 300 to win.

Replaced Banshees with Falcons in all non-Invasion gametypes on Breakpoint.

Increased Banshee respawn time to 180s on Paradiso.

Decreased the frequency of Bro Slayer and Invasion Skirmish in the Noble Map Pack playlist.

Replaced all Slayer game entries on The Cage with Uncaged in all playlists.

Removed all objective game entries on The Cage in all playlists.

Removed Pinnacle from Team Snipers.

Removed Evade from The Arena and Double Team gametypes.

Bungie All Stars – Week 10

You guys are rock stars. I asked for stone edifices that showed off your artistic abilities and you brought me a teetering pile of awesome work. It reminds me of one of my favorite Tagore poems.

“While God waits for his temple to be built of love, men bring stones.”

Whoa. Heavy. And while I wouldn’t go so far as to label myself a deity, some of you did shower me, and Bungie, with love and adoration anyway.

Well, we love you, too! (But your bribery isn’t enough to earn a star.) Others relied less on ego stroking, and went with artistic merit alone.

Here's a quick roundup of the huge landslide of submissions we received. Click 'em to make 'em huge.

A lot of players thought long and hard about their submissions.

While some paid homage to prehistoric monuments.

A few went with rock music, the Limbo Rock, and Rock Lobster. (Get it?)

And many pulled directly from the Bungie lexicon. (Don't tell Sage.)

There were terrifying monstrosities of all shapes and sizes.

Including a couple that were powered by methane.

Curiously, we received several damn dirty submissions.

A slingshot, a Soffish (do not eat!), and a steak dinner.

Some great Pen and Ink work.

An homage to South Park, Halo signed, and a stonework Sniper Rifle.

And of course, some sloppy shops to round it all out.

“THIS TOOK 8 HOURS I STAYED UP UNTIL 1:43 IN AM.
it is david from the Renesanse.
I re-createed it using rocks in forgeworld.
it was hard to find the rignht color for the figleaves.”

Something tells me a lot of things are hard for this chap, but the rest of you made this week's All Star challenge look easy. And awesome. Although I do wonder what people would think of your handiwork if they didn't know what tools you were working with.

Either way, you are special and many of you earned stars for your effort. Great work.

Blame Stosh

Stosh made some special magic happen this week himself. If you haven’t checked out your player stats on your mobile device yet, now you know how you can spend your weekend. Stosh also spent some time finding this Blame Stosh video. It'll make your head spin.